People were talking harshly above us. The next floor up had a room with a locked door, but I smelled no people behind it. Halfway up the steps the smells came down on us: scorched flesh, dried urine, shit, the stinking carcasses of beasts and birds. Near the top of the steps sounds came down on us—whispers, growls, a man, a woman, two women, two men, an animal—and I wished my ears were as good as my nose. Blue light flashed from the room, then flickered down to dark. No way we could climb the last steps without being seen or heard, so we stayed halfway. We could see in the room anyway. And we saw what flickered blue light.
A woman, an iron collar and chain around her neck, her hair almost white but looking blue as light flickered through the room. She screamed, yanked at the chain around her neck, and blue light burst within her, coursing along the tree underneath her skin that one sees when you cut parts of a man open. Instead of blood, blue light ran through her. Then she went dark again. The light was the only way we could make out the slaver in dark robes, the man who fed him dates, and somebody else, with a smell I both remembered and couldn’t recognize.
Then somebody else touched a stick and it burst into flame like a torch. The chained woman jumped back and scrambled against the wall.
A woman held the torch. I had never seen her before, was sure of it even in the dark, but she smelled familiar, so familiar. Taller than everybody else in the room, with hair big and wild like some women above the sand sea. She pointed the torch to the ground, to the stinking half carcass of a dog.
“Tell me true,” the slaver said. “How did you get a dog up into this room?”
The chained woman hissed. She was naked and so dirty that she looked white.
“Move in close and I tell you true,” she said.
The slaver moved in close, she spread her legs, her finger spreading her kehkeh, and shot a streak of piss that wet his sandals before he could pull away. She started to laugh but he cracked his knuckles and punched the cackle out of her mouth. The Leopard jumped and I grabbed his arm. It sounded as if she was laughing until the tall woman’s torch shined on her again as tears pooled in her eyes. She said, “You you you you you all go. You all must go. Go now, run run run run run because Father coming, he coming on the wind don’t you hear the horse go go go you he won’t kiss the head of you unclean boys, go wash wash wash wash wash wash wash—”
The slaver nodded and the tall woman shoved the torch right up to her face. She jumped back again and snarled.
“Nobody comes! Nobody comes! Nobody comes! Who are you?” the woman said.
The slaver moved in to strike her. The chained woman flinched and hid her face, begging him not to strike her anymore. Too many men striking her and they strike her all the time and she just want to hold her boys, the first and the third and the fourth, but not the second, for he does not like when people hold him, not even his mother. I still held on to the Leopard’s arm and could feel his muscles shift and his hair grow under my fingers.
“Enough with that,” the tall woman said.
“This is how you get her to talk,” the slaver said.
“You must think she is one of your wives,” she said.
The Leopard’s arm stopped twitching. She wore a black gown from the northern lands that touched the floor, but cut close to show she was thin. She stooped down to the woman in chains, who still hid her face. I couldn’t see it but knew the chained woman was trembling. The chains clanged when she shook.
“These are the days that never should have happened to you. Tell me about her,” the tall woman said.
The slaver nodded to his date feeder and the date feeder cleared his throat and began.
“This woman, her story, very strange and sad. It is I who am talking and I will—”
“Not a performance, donkey. Just the story.”
I wish I could have seen his scowl but his face was lost to the dark.
“We don’t know her name, and her neighbors, she scared them all away.”
“No she did not. Your master here paid them to leave. Stop wasting my time.”
“As if I give two shakes of a rat’s ass about your time.”
She paused. I could tell nobody expected that to come out of his mouth.
“This always his ways?” she said to the slaver. “Maybe you tell me the story, slave monger, and maybe I cut his tongue out.”
The date feeder pulled a knife from under his sleeve and flipped the handle to her.
“How this for sport? I give you the knife and you try,” he said.
She did not take it. The woman in chains was still hiding her face in the corner. The Leopard was still. The tall woman looked at the date feeder, with a curious smile.
“He has chat, this one. Fine, out with your story. I will hear it.”
“Her neighbor, the washerwoman, say her name is Nooya. And nobody knows her or claims her so Nooya be her name, but she don’t answer to it. She answer to him. Nobody living to tell the story but she, and she not telling. But this is what we know. She live in Nigiki with her husband and five children. Saduk, Makhang, Fula—”
“The shorter version, date feeder.”
The tall woman pointed at him. She did not take her eye off the woman in chains.
“One day when the sun past the noon and was going down, a child knock on her door. A boy child, who look like he was five and four years in age.”
“We have one word for that in the North. We call it nine,” the tall woman said.
She smiled; the date feeder scowled and said, “A boy child knocking on the door rapraprapraprap like he going to knock it down. They after me, they coming for me, save this boy child! he say. Save this boy child, save him, he said. Save me!”
The chained woman darted a look. “Sssssssssssssssave the chhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” she said.
“The little boy screaming and screaming, what could a mother do? A mother with four boys of her own. She open the door and the boy run in. He run right into a wall and fall back and wouldn’t stop moving till she close the door. Who is after you? Nooya ask. Is it your father you run from? Nooya ask. Your mother? Yes, mothers can be strict and fathers can be wicked, but the look in his eye, the fear in his eye was not for strong word or the switch. She reach to touch him and he stagger back so quick his head hit the side of a cupboard and he fall.
“The boy wouldn’t nod, the boy wouldn’t talk, only cry and eat and watch the door. Her four sons including Makhang and Saduk say, Who is the strange boy, Mother, and where did you find him? The boy will not play with them so they leave him alone. All he do is cry and eat. Nooya’s husband was working the salt pits and would not be back till morning. She finally get him to stop crying by promising him millet porridge in the morning with extra honey. That night, Makhang was asleep, Saduk was asleep, the other two boys were asleep, even Nooya was asleep, and she never sleeps until all her boys was under the one roof. Hear this now. One of them was not asleep. One of them get up from the mat, and answer the door though nobody knock. The boy. The boy go to the door that nobody was knocking. The boy open the door and he come in. A handsome man he was, long neck, hair black and white. The night hide his eyes. Thick lips and square jaw and white skin, like kaolin. Too tall for the room. He wrap himself in a white-and-black cloak. The boy point to rooms deep in the house. The handsome man go to room of boys first and kill the first son to the third son and the floor was wet from blood. The little boy watch. The handsome man wake the mother by strangling her throat. He lift her up above his head. The boy watch. He throw her to the ground, and she is crippled with pain and she whimpering and screaming and coughing and nobody hear. She watch when he bring out the fourth son, the smallest boy, the little dormouse, holding his sleepy head up. The mother trying to scream no, no, no, no, but the handsome man laugh and cut his throat. She screaming, and screaming and he drop the fourth son and move in for her. The boy watch.